I'm pleased to announce the release of a new collection by L. Timmel Duchamp, Like Shards of Rainbow Frolicking in the Air, from Aqueduct Press in both print and e-book editions. You can purchase it now from Aqueduct Press at https://www.aqueductpress.com.
Like Shards of Rainbow Frolicking in the Air collects three early and one new story by L. Timmel Duchamp. The Tiptree/Otherwise Award Honor list story “Motherhood, Etc.” explores gender issues through a nineteen year-old’s defiant challenge to medical authorities determined to control their body and contain their sexual difference. Another Tiptree/Otherwise Honor List story, “Welcome, Kid, to the Real World,” explores the grip that sexual dimorphism presented as an either/or choice has on a culture offering a seemingly limitless menu of choices to young adults. In “The Last Nostalgia,” Daisy Q seeks to map the City, a territory lying between the Real World and the Excellent World, home to poets and mathematicians. And finally, in “When Joy Came to the World,” a USian graduate student doing archival research in Florence experiences the joys of mass hedonism following a mysterious snowfall in the Arno.
Richard Kadrey writes about “Welcome, Kid, to the Real World”: “I admired its brains and awareness of its subject matter immensely. It’s a wonderfully imagined externalization of all the little decisions we make every day that add up to who we will be as adults. Only in Duchamp’s world, the decisions are entirely self-conscious and deliberate and revolve around the gender role you will carry, like a big digitally-crafted, chrome albatross around your neck for the rest of your life.”
“Duchamp writes some of the most rewarding science fiction stories you can read today; she is simply and unarguably among the best.”—Samuel R. Delany, author of Dhalgren and Nova
You can read a sample from the book here: https://www.aqueductpress.com/books/samples/978-1-61976-276-3.pdf
And you can read an essay, "What We're Fighting For," about my reasons for publishing this collection now, here: https://ltimmelduchamp.com/essays/Like-Shards-essay.pdf
